Diane of the Green Van eBook

“Carl,” he said at last, “tell me,
are you honestly in earnest when you rag the fellows
so about work and decency and all that sort of thing?”

Carl yawned and lighted a cigar.

“I believe,” said he, “in the eternal
efficacy of good. I believe in the telepathic
potency of moral force. I believe in physical
conservation for the eugenic good of the race and mental
dominance over matter. But I’m infernally
lazy myself, and it’s easy to preach. It’s
even easier to create a counter-philosophy of condonance
and individualism, and I’m alternately an ethical
egoist, a Fabian socialist and a cynic. Moreover,
I’m a creature of whims and inconsistencies
and there are black nights in my temperament when John
Barleycorn lightens the gloom; and there are other
nights when he treacherously deepens it—­but
I’m peculiarly balanced and subject to irresistible
fits of moral atrophy. All of which has nothing
at all to do with the soundness of my impersonal philosophy.
Wherefore,” with a flash of his easy impudence,
“when I preach, I mean it—­for the
other fellow.”

Wherry glanced at the handsome face of his erratic
friend with frank allegiance in his eyes.

Carl flung his cigar into the fire, poured himself
some whiskey and pushed the decanter across the table.

“Have a drink,” he said whimsically.

Dick obeyed. It was an inconsistent supplement
to the sermon but characteristic.

“Carl,” he said, flushing under the ironical
battery of the other’s eyes, “I don’t
think I understand you—­”

Carl laughed.

“Nobody does,” he said. “I
don’t myself.”

CHAPTER III

A WHIM

The fire in the marble fireplace died down, leaping
in fitful shadow over the iron-bound doors riveted
in nail-heads. They too were relics from the
Spanish castle which Norman Westfall had stripped of
its ancient appurtenances to fashion an appropriate
setting for the beautiful young Spanish wife whose
death at the birth of Diane had goaded him to suicide.
That Norman Westfall had regarded the vital spark
within him as an indifferent thing to be snuffed out
at the will of the clay it dominated, was consistent
with the Westfall intolerance of custom and convention.

By the fire Carl smoked and stared at the dying embers.
For all his insolent habit of dominance and mockery
he was keenly sensitive and to-night the significant
defection of Starrett and Payson after months of sycophantic
friendship, had made him quiver inwardly like a hurt
child. Only Wherry had stayed with him when his
career of reckless expenditure had arrived at its
inevitable goal of ruin.

There remained, financially, what? Barely four
thousand a year in securities so iron-bound by his
mother’s will that he could not touch them.